Gary Everett

To get a good first draft of your proposal the team must focus on the following seven key elements of content:

1. The Proposal Manager must produce a numbered and titled outline identifying all topics to be addressed and assign them to knowledgeable authors

2. All Proposal Writers must be given applicable win themes and address them in their sections

3. Meaningful and topic enhancing graphics must be identified and incorporated into each section

4. Meaningful Technical Approach and Management Plan Solution Development Design Meetings must be conducted to get the writing teams on the same page with how the work will be performed and managed using which tool sets

5. Good reference examples of similar contracts where the same work was done successfully must be identified and shared with all writers

6. Meaningful ways the work will be improved must be identified and vividly discussed in each section to show customer benefits

7. An author training session must be held to ensure that all authors know the proposal development processes and how to use all planning templates and checklists

The proposal manager must conduct a meaningful and timely review of each writer’s Writing Plan to ensure each author knows how to provide a good first draft.  The above seven steps should be performed to get a good first draft to a level of at least 60 percent of the final proposal.